Nintendo To Continue Supporting Nintendo DS, At Least In Europe

At a recent Nintendo financial results presentation, company president, Satoru Iwata, once again touched upon the topic of the effect of piracy in Europe on Nintendo DS software sales.

Piracy, Iwata concedes, is part of the problem.

But he also believes that the decline in software sales is the result of Nintendo’s inability to produce a piece of hit software whose success could be compared to that of Brain Age and Nintendogs. Iwata went on to state that while Nintendo are launching the 3DS next year, they will continue to take advantage of the current DS installed base.

"Already in next year, we will launch Nintendo 3DS, but for the existing Nintendo DS family of devices, while we’ll intensify the legal and technical countermeasures against the likes of [piracy devices] MagiCom, we’d like to change the situation by creating hit titles by leveraging, upon the already existing huge installed base of the hardware," Iwata stated to investors.

Art Academy, he went on to reveal, launched with higher than expected sales, which led to shortages in several regions. Meanwhile, Professor Layton and the Unwound Future has been selling in line with previous games in the series.

Hmm…Level 5 still have one last unlocalized Professor Layton DS game, Professor Layton and the Specter’s Flute, which is the start of a series of prequels that take place before the events of Professor Layton and the Curious Village.

Certainly feels like it. Though it is Halloween. Probably aren’t enough free hours in the day for the industry to enjoy it and come up with cool news. =D

http://tristsantithesis.tumblr.com/ Tsunayoshi Sawada

So the only remaining “big” titles for the DS for the western world for 2011 will be, Pokemon Black/White, Ni no Kuni, Okamiden, Professor Layton and the Spectator Flute, and some casual focused hit brain bender game or simulator? 2011 seems kind of bleak. Though I know I will be getting two of the aforementioned titles.

http://www.siliconera.com/ Ishaan

You included Okamiden, so I guess you mean “big” in terms of “big with gamers,” as opposed to big sales numbers. From that perspective, there’s also Ghost Trick, Radiant History (should Atlus choose to bring it), Kingdom Hearts etc.

Aara_Malik_Davoodi

Mhm! Ghost Trick definitely. That game looks to be very fun, probably because I haven’t played anything like it in recent memory

jj984jj

etc. includes Miles Edgeworth 2 and Solatorobo right? :)

Joanna

I hope so too~
Although, Investigation 2 is pretty likely since we’ve gotten all the Gyakuten games so far.

Aara_Malik_Davoodi

Has there been any word about what they’re doing with the 3DS to counter all the piracy?

http://tristsantithesis.tumblr.com/ Tsunayoshi Sawada

The last thing I heard was that their solution was going to employ the technique of fighting piracy with forced software based firmware updates.

kylehyde

Too bad to see that nintendo is planning to make the transition between DS to 3DS a lot faster than the one from GBA to DS, I mean is sad that they won’t give a little more of air to this awesome handheld, seriously of all my game’s collection the DS is the one that has more titles.As I see the things the last DS first party game that I will buy will be Golden Sun Dark Dawn and the last third batch of third party games will be composed by ghost trick, okamiden and possibly professor layton and the spectre flute (which I hope that level 5 decides to publish that title) and ace attorney investigation 2.About Ni no Kuni, I don’t have high (not even low) hopes of this title for being localized.Atlus (Japan and America) has been very generous with the DS users but is a little worriesome that there has not been announces about localization during many months, still have hopes that “Super Robot Taisen OG Saga: Endless Frontier EXCEED” gets localized along with “Radiant Historia”. But the recent changes in the Atlus administration and the fact that the last announced DS title that they will publish is a generic naruto title, it really worries me about what will be the course of actions that this company will take (yeah I read the CEO’s declarations about that nothing is going to change, but that sound to me more like when the parents say “we are no fighting, we are having a little argue”)Too bad that soma bringer, last window (at least in american territories) and ASH will always be MIA titles that have potential but Nintendo blindly refused to bring (seriously, glory of heracles instead of one of this titles, give me a break NOA and NOJ).

TNA_Lewis

I was just on my Power Up Rewards account (the new rewards thingy GameStop has), and it actually has the fourth Professor Layton game listed as “The Flute of Malevolent Destiny”, if that’s any indicator.

http://www.siliconera.com/ Ishaan

Yea, that name’s been around for a while. Great catch, though! I wonder how long they’ll wait to bring it out, or who’ll publish it.

malek86

Is he talking about Japan or Europe? Because I’ve never heard of Magicom here, everybody uses R4s.

http://www.siliconera.com/ Ishaan

That’s just the term they use for flashcarts in general.

http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=2704923 Buntar0

Layton was a pretty big hit with the family, so that’s good news. I’m not entirely convinced until I see this continued DS support actually happen though.
See GBA-DS transistion in Europe: We never got Wario Ware twisted for example, although we got release dates and a nice offical page.

Joanna

Kind of wish NoA would bring over a few things they left in Japan. Like kylehyde said, I’d love to see ASH and Soma Bringer. If I had to chose, ASH, would be my top choice. I’d also like to see Last Window, but I’m just happy I can get the game in English, so I won’t be too upset if it is not released here. Pokemon Black and White is a given, so I’m not worried about those making it here.I’m glad that Capcom is releasing Ghost Trick and Okamiden. I shall be picking both of those up. :3For Atlus, I just want Luminous Arc 3 and Radiant Historia. That’s all and I shall be very happy if they would just release those two. (Few other games like the Wizardry DS titles and Yggdra Unison, would also be nice, but those two are the top of my list).And I wish L5 would announce Ni no Kuni already! I would be really surprised if they passed on this since Ghilbi is pretty well known here as well, so with the right marketing, they could turn both games (DS and PS3) into hits. The Inazuma games would be nice as well, but I won’t hold my breath.And from SE I have a long list of DS games: Chocobo Tales 2, Chocobo Mystery Dungeon, SaGa 2 & 3, DQ VI, and DQM: Joker 2. Out of those, I really really want DQ VI.

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